Every day, for eight hours a day, five phone-line staffers at the Korean Community Services in Buena Park are peppered with questions from people worried about coronavirus and its many related problems.

“How can people stay insured if they lose their job?” “Will accepting unemployment insurance affect my immigration status?” “I feel bad; where can I get tested?”

The non-profit, which runs health clinics in Orange County, is a hub for the region’s Korean-speaking community. And many of the callers are most comfortable in that language.

Not that all of the issues involved — fatigue, fear — need translation.

“We’re doing our best, but it’s been furious,” said Ellen Ahn, the organization’s executive director. “We are all human beings, too. And we are tired.”

In the age of coronavirus, news flows at warp speed. Orders and directives are issued daily, even hourly, by every level of government, from city to country. And, often, that information changes. What was true and potentially life-saving a week ago sometimes isn’t today.

But members of minority communities, particularly those who are lower-income, are dealing with much more than threats posed by the disease.

They’re worried about health care. Many have lost jobs and are facing potential eviction. Some are going hungry. And for those who have at a family member without legal immigration status, they also fear turning to government for help.

This avalanche of information and anxiety is straining people in those communities, and the nonprofits that serve them.

“There’s a lot of everything right now,” said Luz Gallegos, community programs director at Perris-based Training Occupational Development Educating Communities (TODEC) Legal Center, which serves migrant communities in the Inland Empire and Imperial County.

“We get calls at one, two, five, six, seven in the morning,” she said.

“The community can’t sleep.”

Soo Ahn, a patient at Korean Community Services fills out paperwork in Buena Park, CA, on Friday, April 3, 2020. Anh does not use the groups non-English services, she has been using their medical and mental health services for six months. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

To get information to everybody — all of whom are potential victims and carriers of coronavirus — health providers of all types are stepping up their outreach to immigrant communities, especially those who don’t speak English.

Latino Health Access pushed coronavirus messages through a loudspeaker in a minivan parked outside a Northgate Supermarket in Santa Ana.

“We started taking our van with sound equipment to schools and supermarket parking lots to share information with people in a simple way,” said the group’s CEO, America Bracho.

Many government websites now include a Google Translate button so residents can get information in the language they understand best.

Others are more specific. San Bernardino County, for example, is translating all of its COVID-19 outreach materials into Spanish and Mandarin, and residents also can call the county’s COVID-19 hotline (909-387-3911) to get help from Spanish-speaking staff, county spokesman David Wert said in an e-mail.

Los Angeles County is offering simultaneous translation of its daily news conferences, which are delivered in English, into Spanish, and plans to expand that live translation to Mandarin as early as next week. Eventually, the briefings will be translated into Korean, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Tagalog and Armenian. Also, the county has started to give news briefings in specific ethnic communities.

In Orange County, the county Health Care Agency is circulating COVID-19 educational flyers in Spanish, Korean, Vietnamese, Arabic, Chinese and Farsi.

Still, translating information about coronavirus to the Chinese population can be difficult, said Saga Conroy, community outreach director for Orange County Supervisor Don Wagner. One of the communities Wagner represents is Irvine, a city where 45% of the population is Asian, including many who speak Chinese.

Conroy has been working to connect immigrant organizations with the county’s Health Care Agency so questions can be answered directly by health professionals. But the Chinese community has so many questions, the Conroy said she might need help making sure everybody gets answers as the health crisis continues.

“I’m happy to help, but I’m hoping I can get some help as well,” Conroy said.

But many residents who don’t speak English — or who don’t speak it well enough to take in information that might be critical to their health — often prefer to deal with trusted sources. That can mean turning to the same nonprofits that have helped them in the past.

“People are scared,” said Gallegos of TODEC. “They call us because they want a feeling of reassurance from an organization they trust.”

One who called Gallegos’ organization is a woman named Norma, who asked that her last name not be used because of her immigration status. She said she and her husband lost their jobs picking vegetables in Riverside County two weeks ago, and currently can’t find more work.

“I’m very worried and stressed,” she said in Spanish. “I called TODEC to ask for help. They guided me on writing a letter to my landlord so we won’t be evicted.”

VietRISE, a nonprofit advocacy group serving the Vietnamese community in Orange County, has a webpage of resource guides. Executive Director Tracy La said those guides provide information on topics such as filing unemployment insurance and practicing self-care, and they are available in English and Spanish as well as Vietnamese.

Mary Anne Foo, executive director of the Orange County Asian and Pacific Islander Community Alliance, said her staff has been using telehealth to help their clients’ physical and mental health, and they’ve been helping others get information about federal small-business loans.

“There’s a lot of anxiety,” she said. “People aren’t sure… what to believe and what to follow.”

Gallegos, whose parents created TODEC 35 years ago, said her clients face issues that extend beyond the epidemic. For example, she said, some are “afraid to go to the doctor because they think it will count against them when they apply for legal residency in the future.” (Gallegos is quick to tell them that isn’t the case, and the government isn’t applying so-called “public charge” guidelines to those seeking help with symptoms of coronavirus.)

But as communities reach out for help, the toll on the people providing some of that help is high. Many nonprofits, already small in size, are seeing a spike in their workload.

At TODEC, Gallegos said her 26-member staff and 311 volunteers have handled 5,000 calls since the coronavirus outbreak started in the Inland Empire.

“Those calls are coming from every single thing we do” she said, referring to issues such as immigration to food security. “But it all touched COVID.”

Adding to the stress is that instead of handling this unprecedented caseload face-to-face, as they usually do on other issues, right now everything has to be done virtually.

Aileen Louie, co-executive director for the Los Angeles chapter of Asian Advancing Justice, said talking by phone or computer doesn’t work for many of the people she helps.

“As this gets longer, and (it) becomes clear that we won’t be back to our office within a couple of weeks, people will have to make some decision.”

Many of those clients — who need help with immigration questions, housing and other issues — are not comfortable with working on their cases remotely, Louie said.

And for Gallegos, many of her clients don’t have access to a computer or reliable Internet, meaning getting online information is a challenge. Gallegos said she is asking people to donate laptops, software and cell phones to provide for her clients and staff.

“We all have the heart to work for the community,” she said. “But we weren’t ready to change gears so quick and go from an office setting to a virtual setting.”

And Ahn, of the Korean Community Association, said in addition to getting out accurate information, she and others sometimes have to dispel bogus information spreading within the Korean community. A couple of weeks ago, a social media message in Korean reported that Ahn’s clinic was a coronavirus testing center.

“Fake news,” Ahn said. “Travels fast in ethnic communities.”

Moises Vazquez, left, a community health worker talks to a shopper as he blares a message in Spanish from a speaker on top of the Latino Health Access minivan in the parking lot of the Northgate Supermarket in downtown Santa Ana April 3, 2020.The non-profit organization is sharing messages about Covid-19 and new eviction bans.(Photo by Michael Fernandez, Contributing Photographer)

Jeong Park covers the inland Orange County cities and communities for The Orange County Register. He was born in Korea but grew up in Southern California, bouncing from Van Nuys to Pomona to Westwood, where he attended UCLA. He spent few months in Indiana as a reporter before coming to the Register. He is always looking for good Asian food, which there are thankfully plenty of in OC.

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